Social Networking... or Notworking?

Social networking is on the bubble, with Orkut the latest to spur invites from friends, virtual acquaintances, and "others." I've been watching the Lord of the Rings DVDs with family, and somehow this feels like the gathering of wizards, men,

Social networking is on the bubble, with Orkut the latest to spur invites from friends, virtual acquaintances, and "others." Ive been watching the Lord of the Rings DVDs with family, and somehow this feels like the gathering of wizards, men, hobbits, orcs, and treefolk in no particular order or trusted reputation. Baselines Sean Gallagher and I traded thoughts over iChat IM.
Doc Searls quotes his Cluetrain cohort along similar lines:
This reminds me of a website called Six Degrees. It disappeared several years ago after I broke it by inviting half the population of Planet Earth to make me their wife, lover, boss, father, brother, sister, repo man, or other intimate. The CEO actually phoned me and said, "Who are you and why are you doing this to us?" He seemed distraught. The answer was, of course, because I could.

Steve Gillmor is editor of eWEEK.com's Messaging & Collaboration Center. As a principal reviewer at Byte magazine, Gillmor covered areas including Visual Basic, NT open systems, Lotus Notes and other collaborative software systems. After stints as a contributing editor at InformationWeek Labs, editor in chief at Enterprise Development Magazine, editor in chief and editorial director at XML and Java Pro Magazines, he joined InfoWorld as test center director and columnist.